


Anderson Anders

by windsorblue



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-12
Updated: 2005-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:45:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4540299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windsorblue/pseuds/windsorblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who loved Gluttony enough to bring him back from the dead?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anderson Anders

Taking a liberty or two with the sin-creation process. I hope no one's offended by that. The basic idea was, who loved Gluttony enough to try to bring him back from the dead?

Andersen Anders was, in his way, a very great man, and not just in size. He wasn't a smart man, nor a handsome man, nor a rich man, but he was kind and generous - too generous, some said - and wise in the way that the truly smart or handsome or rich never are.

Andersen Anders was a loved man. Not by the maidens in his village, mind; not by the lads too pretty for their own good - no, he went to his grave a bachelor and a virgin - but by the children of his village, and by their grateful parents, who saw in him someone who cared for their children as fiercely as they did themselves.

Whatever Andersen Anders had, he shared. Whatever he could give, he gave. And that was that.

In springtime he picked the flowers in his fields and gave them to the children, so they could in turn give them to their mothers. At harvest time, his crops were the village's crops, and no one went hungry. In winter, for the solstice holidays, he made toys for the children with his own hands, and dressed as Father Winter to give them out.

By all accounts, Andersen Anders was the most generous man his village had ever known. And, as is the way of the world, it was his generosity that got him killed. Murdered, in his sleep, by traveling rogues who had sought shelter for the night in the village - shelter which Andersen Anders had been all too happy to give.

When his body was found in his bloodstained bed, his village mourned. And of all the villagers, the children mourned most of all, for their Father Winter was inexplicably gone, and no one could ever hope to take his place.

He was murdered in the early months of winter, when the frost was new on the ground, ground already too hard to dig a grave in. His body was kept in the basement of the village church, wrapped and shrouded, awaiting the thaw which would allow him to be buried properly.

As the solstice holiday drew near, the village children fell more deeply into despair. Some refused to eat; some wept all the day through, and as they grew pale and wan with mourning, their parents grew frightened and desperate.

They went one night to the village alchemist and pleaded with him - was there not some bit of alchemy which could bring the dead back from the grave? That first night he turned them away, saying such things were forbidden. But the next day his own daughter took to her bed, refusing food and drink. The village parents came back the next night, and the next, and by the third night the alchemist, as desperate as they, agreed.

Bring a feast, he told them, a feast not yet slaughtered - animals enough to feed the entire village for their solstice dinner. Bring a token, he said - something of value to sacrifice, for each thing created by alchemy required the destruction of something else. And the villagers did as they were told, and the alchemist went down into the basement of the church. He drew the symbols on the worn floor in white chalk, and in the center of a great star within a circle, he lay the body of Andersen Anders. The villagers' sacrifices were brought into the circle as well, arranged around him like offerings to a god or king, and dropped over his body were the rare flowers that grew in his fields, only in winter. The children were assembled too, gathered around the circle with hope shining in their eyes.

Place your hands on the circle, the alchemist said, and one by one, the children did.

He began to speak the words, a chant that may or may not have mattered, and the room began to glow warm; that cold little basement. But soon the glow began to burn, and the children began to scream; blood-curdling screams that made their parents grab for them in fear. The glow became like lightning, like hellfire, and one by one the children were rent asunder, ripped from their mothers' grasping hands, blood screams filling the air.

The screams fell silent, a most awful quiet. The glow subsided. And Andersen Anders sat up on his bier. He looked about him - confused, for a moment - until his eyes lit upon the poor terrified animals, still alive there in the circle. His eyes glowed, burned like the light which had consumed the village children, and in a voice not quite his own, Andersen Anders said, "I'm hungry."

So he ate. And he ate.

He stopped eating when there was nothing left to eat. The animals were gone, and so were the village parents, and so was the alchemist. Gone too were the other bodies awaiting burial in the church basement, although those, in his view, weren't nearly so tasty.

Andersen Anders no longer knew his name. He no longer knew how to make toys, or how to share what he had. He no longer remembered the name of his village or which crops were his to till. All he knew was that he was hungry.

And so off he went, in search of something to eat.  



End file.
